Prufrock's Wargaming Blog

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Online interaction best practice

There's a song by a band named Lynyrd Skynyrd called 'Simple Man' in which the Southern rockers relate some advice their mother(s) gave them. "Don't live too fast"; "Don't forget there's someone up above"; "Be a simple kind of man"; "Forget your lust for the rich man's gold", etc.

It occurs to me that wargame-centric bloggers need their own version of this, but rather than present it in musical form, I've decided to be equally imperative but more prosaic, as this is in keeping with our style.

So here we go. You can hum it if you prefer.

1) Always comment on the posts of popular and respected wargaming bloggers. Be aggressive. For example: "You may think the article you've just posted demonstrates a good way to make nice cheap trees for 6mm ACW games, but I have a far better method."

This implies that you must be someone who has a lot to offer the community.

2) Be friendly. Post links to your blogposts everywhere you can. If the posts you link to have nothing to do with the topic at hand then so much the better: people need to expand their horizons at times. Crossposting at TMP is a good idea, as is flooding your friends' facebook pages.

3) Don't be positive just for the sake of it. When you are reviewing figures, complain about the service you got from the retailer, the poor quality of the castings and the lack of variety in the poses. You never know if the retailers/manufacturers you dealt with ever see your post they may say to themselves "Gosh, I must send this dashing young opinion-shaper free stuff to placate him."

4) Be helpful. If someone somewhere is asking a question, always answer it. If you don't know the answer, use an especially authoritative tone. For example, "Take it from me, you CAN use the Essex 25mm late Roman range to expand your Warhammer Empire army."

4) Don't be afraid to repeat yourself.

5) Be gentle with newcomers. Don't rip them to shreds for disagreeing with you or for not knowing something that you already know. Just point out to them firmly but forcefully that they are wrong, and that since they clearly don't have much of a clue maybe they should shut up.

Or if you are really independently-minded you could just listen to the song and come up with your own adaption.

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Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you find something here to enjoy. I'm an ESL teacher who lives in Japan and I keep this blog to record my wargaming activities. Feel free to leave any comments you wish, and if you are kind enough to follow my blog I will generally return the favour.

The layout here, until I stuffed it up, was done by my mate Nige over at the fishingnews.co.nz. If you like fishing at all, go and take a look at Nige's blog. There's plenty of good reading material there.